fellow-manufacturers that a high standard of comfort among the workers
would bring a correspondent rise in working efficiency.

The history of the early factory system, under which rapid fortunes
were built out of the excessive toil of children and low-skilled adult
workers paid at rates which were, in many instances, far below true
"subsistence wages," furnished to the commercial mind a convincing
argument in favour of "cheap labour," and set political economy for
half a century at war with the rising sentiments of humanity.[227]
Even now, the fear frequently expressed in the New World regarding the
"competition of cheap labour" attests a strong survival of this
theory, which held it to be the first principle of "good business" to
pay as low wages as possible.

Sec. 2. The trend of more recent thought has been in the direction of a
progressive modification of the doctrine of the "economy of low
wages." The common maxim that "if you want a thing well done you must
expect to pay for it" implies some general belief in a certain
correspondence of work and wages. The clearer formulation of this idea
has been in large measure the work of economic thinkers who have set
themselves to the close study of comparative statistics. The work in
which Mr. Brassey, the great railway contractor, was engaged gave him
an opportunity of making accurate comparison of the work and wages of
workmen of various nationalities, and his son, Sir Thomas Brassey,
collected and published a number of facts bearing upon the subject
which, as regards certain kinds of work, established a new relation
between work and wages. He found that English navvies employed upon
the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, and receiving from 5s. to 6s. a
day, did a greater amount of work for the money than French-Canadians
paid at 3s. 6d. a day; that it was more profitable to employ
Englishmen at 3s. to 3s. 6d. upon making Irish railways than Irishmen
at 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d.; that "in India, although the cost of dark
labour ranges from 4-1/2d. to 6d. a day, mile for mile the cost of
railway work is about the same as in England;" that in quarry work,
"in which Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen were employed side by
side, the Frenchman received three, the Irishman four, and the
Englishman six francs a day. At those different rates the Englishman
was found to be the most advantageous workman of the three." Extending
his inquiries to the building trades, to mining, and to vario